Rainfall

Rainfall totals were below average across the Pastoral districts with totals generally ranging from 2 to 20mm, in what is typically a low rainfall time of the year in these areas. The highest August rainfall total recorded in the Pastoral Districts was 39.8 mm at Yardea in the Northwest Pastoral district with the majority of that total occurring with some isolated thunderstorm activity in that district in the first week of the month. Oodnadatta and Marla both recorded no rainfall this month, against average August rainfall of 8.2mm, though this has happened previously at these stations.

August rainfall totals across the Agricultural districts were quite mixed, with many areas tending below average for rainfall, though parts of the western and northern Eyre Peninsula, the Mount Lofty Ranges, the Adelaide Plains, and the Murraylands and the Upper South-east tended slightly above average.

Rainfall totals generally ranged from 30 to 80 mm, tending to the upper end of that range in the south-east and the Mount Lofty Ranges, and with several locations recording in excess of 100m in the Mount Lofty Ranges. The highest August rainfall total recorded in the Agricultural districts was 149.6mm at Crafers (Mount Lofty).

This year to date, rainfall totals have been 30 to 40% above average across most districts, apart from the southern agricultural districts where rainfall has been close to average for the year to the end of August. Much of the above average year to date rainfall is due to very wet conditions January to March, with rainfall tending below average since then. The recent drier conditions have led to growing season (April to October ) rainfall to the end of August being 30 to 80 mm below average in many locations in the agricultural areas, though this is very mixed from location to location across different regions.

Temperature

The weather patterns in August 2011 were dominated by blocking high pressure systems centred in the Tasman Sea leading to more northerly winds, and warmer temperatures across South Australia. State-wide the monthly mean temperature (the average of the maximum and minimum temperatures) for August 2010 was 2.0 °C warmer than average this August, the fourth warmest in the area averaged record which goes back to 1950.

Mean maximum temperatures were generally between 1°C and 2°C above average across the Agricultural districts this August, and 2°C to 3°C across average across the Pastoral Districts. Some sites set new record warmest temperature records for August as a whole.

In the Pastoral districts mean maximum temperatures ranged from 19.3 °C at Yunta Airstrip to 25.2 °C at Oodnadatta Airport. The highest recorded maximum temperature in the Pastoral districts for August was 34.5 °C at Ernabella on the 25th. Mean maximum temperatures over the Agricultural districts ranged from 12.1 °C at Mount Lofty to 21.7 °C at Port Augusta Aero.

The highest maximum recorded in the Agricultural districts during August was 31.4 °C at Port Augusta on the 3rd. The lowest was 7.7 °C at Mount Lofty on the 8th of August.

Mean minimum temperatures were warmer than average by up to 2 degrees around the state. Some locations around southern coasts- Maitland, Lameroo, Cape Willoughby and Coonawarra, had record warmest August overnight minimum temperatures.

Mean minimum temperatures in the pastoral areas ranged from 5.7 °C at Gluepot to 8.8°C at Coober Pedy Airport. Over the Agricultural districts mean monthly minimum temperatures ranged from 3.7 °C at Yongala to 12.7 °C at Neptune Island. The lowest recorded minimum temperature this August was -5.0 °C at Yongala on the 28th .

Notes

A Monthly Climate Summary is prepared to list the main features of the weather in South Australia using the most timely and accurate information available on the date of publication; it will generally not be updated. Later information, including data that has had greater opportunity for quality control, will be presented in the Monthly Weather Review, usually published in the fourth week of the month.

This statement has been prepared based on information available at
4 pm on Thursday 1 September 2011.
Some checks have been made on the data, but it is possible that results will change
as new information becomes available.

Averages are long-term means based on observations from
all available years of record, which vary widely from site to site.
They are not shown for sites with less than 20 years of record, as they cannot then be calculated reliably.
The median
is sometimes more representative than the
mean
of long-term average rain.

The Rank indicates how rainfall this time compares with the climate record for the site,
based on the
decile ranking
(very low rainfall is in decile 1, low in decile 2 or 3,
average in decile 4 to 7, high in decile 8 or 9
and very high is in decile 10).
The Fraction of average shows how much rain has fallen this time as a
percentage of the long-term mean.